Strange Wilderness

Strange Wilderness (2008) is a comedy directed by Fred Wolf about an animal TV show. A son takes over his dead father’s TV show which has become a failure at risk of cancellation as it lacks inspiration, budget and audience. The program is widely criticized because of the inaccuracy between its themes and what is presented on the screen; the show has passed from being an educational natural wilderness-themed program to a sensationalist and ridiculous representation of human wilderness (sex, blood, and drugs). To honour his father’s memory, the son, Peter (Steve Zahn), forms a group of four men and a woman to look for the legendary “Bigfoot” creature in the Ecuadorian forest. A trip to Latin America could help the group increase the show’s ratings, and it is also an opportunity to go on a real and wild adventure. It is a parody of animal-life shows like National Geographic or Animal Planet and questions the concept of “wilderness.”

By the time they get to the jungle, we know that any representation of animal wilderness will have a sexual undertone, a tragic death, or some footage of animal life accompanied by a nonsensical description. When they arrive at the Ecuadorean jungle, for example, the first wild animal to be portrayed in the TV show is a monkey, shown with the comment that “monkeys make up over 80% of the monkey population.” Immediately thereafter, Peter randomly talks about lions, zebras, giraffes, and gazelles, all iconic animals from Africa, not South America. The movie is full of generally mistaken and mismatching information like this one that let us assume that the group has no idea of what they are doing or talking about, which contributes to the simplistic humour of the plot.

Clearly each member of the group has a problem with drugs, alcohol, or/and a perverted mind which relates everything to sex. Men are presented like some kind of prehistoric troglodytes trying to show off their masculinity to the rest of the group Their uncontrollable and desperate need for women, and their failing efforts to prove themselves superior to animals, make their silliness extremely obvious. The only woman in the group (also basically the only woman in the movie) adds the brain to the group. She seems very aware of the ridiculousness of the trip and of the teenage-perversion of the group, but she is doing her job, so her opinion does not really count.

The trip to Ecuador is not only an adventure to find Bigfoot; it also represents hope to find their better selves. For Pete, keeping the show on screen is saving a legacy and part of his pursuit to become more like his dad. For Whitaker (Kevin Heffernan), going to a recondite place in the middle of the jungle is a chance to force himself out of alcoholism and to experience real life (sober). For the group as a whole, this journey forms not only a group of colleagues but a group of new friends.

In the movie, travelling to the South American wilderness (and finding Bigfoot) is the craziest idea one could have. And to everyone's surprise, since the plot is full of failures, in the end they do indeed find the creature. However, their hopes vanish after they “accidentally” kill Bigfoot and go back to the United States.

How is Latin America being portrayed? One of the reasons the group travels South the Border is to fulfill their expectations of presenting “real wilderness” in the TV show so it stays on the screen. Through the journey across the jungle to find Bigfoot, we are introduced to a dangerous place (funny, exotic, but dangerous): a lot of monkeys, snakes, carnivorous piranhas, tribes that cut scrotums and kill with arrows, explorers who will take advantage of you and steal your belongings, and of course the enormous Bigfoot.

Yet the portrayal of Latin American nature is not really important to the plot (we know that all the information given is intentionally mistaken or exaggerated because of the genre). The main reason for going on the trip is to seek out new material that will increase the TV show’s ratings. Animal life, whether it is a Latin American beast or an insect from the tree outside a building, is taken and exploited as a commodity. In the movie, those kinds of TV shows will not portray wilderness as it is, but as the audience wants it. Nature has been fetishized with sensationalist images; sex, blood, or comedy itself are more important than the facts. This is very clear at the end of the movie after the Bigfoot report is not accepted since Pete decides to film an episode about shark attacks, which saves the TV show. "People love shark attacks, you are back again," says the TV director. And what is wilderness? Who or what is "the wild"? Even though the TV show is called Strange Wilderness (referring to wild animals) and the Latin America jungle is the wildest place they could go to, ridiculing aspects of American pop culture like views on the use of drugs and guns, the sexual portrayal of women on TV (even worse of women of tropical places like Latin America and Africa), and sensationalism to create profit, suggest that animal-life or Latin America is not the only wild ideas portrayed in this film (they are scarcely important at all in the movie, to be honest).

Certainly, what is being portrayed about the Latin American jungle might appear quite wild, but these imaginaries of wilderness (like violent indigenous tribes and creatures living in caves) are only the space to which Western Society compares itself to argue it is superior, and a more civilized society. Wilderness is a word used to emphasize the most uncivilized, least human, least Western aspects of life. It is a word used to create a division and to reject certain truths that make "civilized" society uncomfortable. What could be wilder than killing animals for no reason, seeing women as a sexual object, becoming desperate for food or sex, doing crazy things under the influence of alcohol and drugs, feeling entertained when there is a shark attack or someone dies, and then using all these things to have more ratings on screen?